Slashdot Mirror
How the Red Cross Raised Half a Billion Dollars For Haiti and Built 6 Homes
An anonymous reader points out an investigation from NPR and Propublica into how the Red Cross spent the $500 million in relief funds they gathered to help Haiti after the country was devastated by an earthquake in 2010. They found "a string of poorly managed projects, questionable spending and dubious claims of success." While the organization claims to have built homes for 130,000 people, investigators only found six permanent homes they could attribute to the charity. The Red Cross admitted afterward that the 130,000 number included people who had attended a seminar on how to fix their own homes.
"Lacking the expertise to mount its own projects, the Red Cross ended up giving much of the money to other groups to do the work. Those groups took out a piece of every dollar to cover overhead and management. Even on the projects done by others, the Red Cross had its own significant expenses – in one case, adding up to a third of the project’s budget." The Red Cross raised far more money for Haiti than any other charity, but is unwilling to provide details on where the money went. In one case, a brochure that extolled the virtues of one project claimed $24 million had been spent on a particular area — but residents of that area haven't seen any improvement in living conditions, and are unable to get information from the Red Cross. The former director of the Red Cross's shelter program said charity officials had no idea how to spend the money they'd accumulated.
"Lacking the expertise to mount its own projects, the Red Cross ended up giving much of the money to other groups to do the work. Those groups took out a piece of every dollar to cover overhead and management. Even on the projects done by others, the Red Cross had its own significant expenses – in one case, adding up to a third of the project’s budget." The Red Cross raised far more money for Haiti than any other charity, but is unwilling to provide details on where the money went. In one case, a brochure that extolled the virtues of one project claimed $24 million had been spent on a particular area — but residents of that area haven't seen any improvement in living conditions, and are unable to get information from the Red Cross. The former director of the Red Cross's shelter program said charity officials had no idea how to spend the money they'd accumulated.
This has already been debunked on skeptics stackexchange http://skeptics.stackexchange....
Though not about the Red Cross, I have two anecdotes about Haiti relief efforts. A 20 year old friend of mine wanted to help so he signed up with a charitable organization to travel to Haiti and help. He used all of his savings to pay for plane tickets, housing, meals, and to donate to the program. He also did it using his 2 week vacation time for the year. They were assigned to teams of about 10 each of college aged Americans. They were given shovels, rakes, and wheel barrows and told to clean up the destroyed shanties. They worked morning until night while the locals watched them. Each week part of the group left and a new group arrived. Some stayed for one week, some for two, others for 2 months. This was going to be a year long project or more to clean the ruined shanties from the valley and hillside. A bulldozer and backhoe could have done it in a month or less, then they could begin rebuilding. The big question is why were the locals that would benefit from all this work not helping? They just stood around and watched. This was unskilled labor anyone could do it.
The other is our local university has a charitable student org that was also getting students to self pay to go help "Rebuild Haiti". All they ended up doing was teaching English.
Waste, waste, everywhere.
I don't have any love for Hillary Clinton, but before I accept your claim that she is the personification of evil, do you mind providing a source for any of the claims you're making there?
I was watching an interview
What interview?
with this minister
Which minister?
there is nothing to show for it but a couple projects that were photo ops
Do you really believe that? Over 9,000 homes were built, at a minimum, not to mention consumables like food and water, as well as temporary shelters, repairs to existing structures, and money for rent.
This is the woman people want for president
Are you trying to say that she personally approves or disapproves of all Clinton Foundation work in Haiti, which in turn somehow oversees all international efforts? That everything that happens is traced to Hillary personally? Her husband founded the thing, that's why it was originally called the William J. Clinton Foundation. Hillary joined the thing in 2013 (which is several years after the 2010 earthquake, in case you're curious), and she said she was going to work on issues concerning women, small children, and economic development.
Or, is this what you wanted to talk about:
The 26-member international Interim Haiti Reconstruction Commission, headed by Bill Clinton and Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive, convened in June 2010. That committee is overseeing the US$5.3 billion pledged internationally for the first two years of Haiti's reconstruction.
The commission was critiqued by Haitian groups for lacking Haitian civil society representation and accountability mechanisms. Half the representation on the commission was given to foreigners who effectively bought their seats by pledging certain amounts of money. An international development consultant contracted by the commission was quoted as saying, "Look, you have to realize the IHRC [commission] was not intended to work as a structure or entity for Haiti or Haitians. It was simply designed as a vehicle for donors to funnel multinationals' and NGOs' project contracts."
Because, for a minute there, you sounded like just another political idiot taking any opportunity to bash whoever you don't like. But surely that's not the case, right?
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Well, whatever your and mine opinion on taxes, they really are collected at gunpoint — you aren't even trying to refute this truism, you (and kenj123) are just expressing your displeasure at it being pointed out to you.
Does this mean, we reject all taxation? No, I don't think so. But I do think, that spending thus-collected funds on anything not threatening the very survival of the country — such as defending from external enemies or maintaining law and order within — is immoral. And, yes, this includes spending even a dime on charities.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
- UNICEF expenses of 52 million dollars (pdf) [unicefusa.org] in expenses related to management and fundraising (out of a 600 million dollars budget, and that's one of the best managed ones out there)
(I'm not even going to comment on PETA because they have jack shit to do with the current conversation.)
You are actually complaining about an administrative overhead of 9%? Seriously?
For comparison, Apple's OPEX was a little over 25% of revenues as of March 2015. Google's was a little less than 25%. Microsoft's was 22%
These are all operations that have significant global logistical operations, and involve a combination of scale and skill in their day-to-day operations.
I assisted UNICEF (as a local 'fixer') with their operations when cyclone Pam hit Vanuatu. (See here for a blow-by-blow account.) It is emphatically true that costs are very high in the immediate aftermath of a disaster. Spending time nickle-and-diming over expenses can cost lives. We needed phones, cars, room to work (their local HQ was damaged), food and water, and sufficient staff and infrastructure to move hundreds of tonnes of food and supplies at a time.
For the record: The Red Cross and UNICEF were the first organisations to deliver emergency supplies, because they had the foresight to pre-position materials and equipment in-country prior to the disaster. That was money well-spent.
And yet... and yet the biggest problem we faced was middle management second-guessing the people at the operational level, failing to support them because of the expenses they were incurring. And this fear continues to permeate precisely because of stories like this.
Let's be perfectly clear: It was the AMERICAN Red Cross that screwed up so royally here. Not the International Red Cross, which provides unique and necessary services throughout the world.
You wouldn't tar every single technology company with the same brush as games maker Electronic Arts (who really do deserve their own special circle in Hell). So why, when one NGO manages their way to disaster, does giving to charities suddenly become unwise?
I have witnessed—up close and in more detail than anyone could ever want—the effects of disaster. I'm still working to document the many successes and failures of cyclone Pam. And I will say without hesitation that the mantra here in Vanuatu was 'we will not be another Haiti'. Haiti really was a clusterfuck from start to finish, mostly because of the local government's inability to control and coordinate the response. In Vanuatu, government officials stayed on the front foot, and were unafraid to take NGOs to task when they first refused to cooperate.
People need to be reminded: Disaster zones are shitty places to work. They are in fact some of the worst places in the world. And on top of this there are indeed thousand-dollar-a-day careerists who descend on them as a matter of course. But for every one person like that, there are hundreds of dedicated professionals who have devoted themselves simply to helping out. Many of them work on a purely voluntary basis. Mistakes get made every day, for countless reasons, but not least because in a post-disaster situation, you're working with whatever information you've been able to gather by word of mouth; you've got virtually no means to coordinate your efforts, and you cannot know what the worst-affected areas look like until you go there yourself. On top of all that, you're working as much as 20 hours a day, resting for maybe 10-15 minutes at most, and eating whenever someone stuffs an emergency ration into your hand.
Not to put too fine a point on it, It's really fucking hard.
So yes, rag all you like on the American Red Cross.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
Something similar just happened in Nepal. The UK raised a huge food and materials drive that positioned hundreds of tone of relief supplies at a military base in Yorkshire, ready to be sent in. It's still all sitting there. Apparently Nepal wants to charge customs duty of 30% on all the relief supplies that are coming into the country.
In my case it was when I was trying to get home from South East Asia on emergency leave after my mom had a cerebral hemorrhage with a poor prognosis for survival. I landed at Travis AFB near San Francisco after being awake for most of 3 days travel with only a little cash, but a good balance in a Bank America checking account and the Red Cross at Travis said it would take them 3 or 4 days to get an ok to cash one of my checks. I gambled my last cash on a bus ride to San Francisco International Airport and fortunately Delta was happy to take my check for a ticket and I got home in time to see my mom in the hospital. That is my personal experience, I have heard GI's tell of much worse.
Scandinavian countries are socialdemocratic, not socialist, and their state welfare programs have been severely curtailed since joining the European Union. GDP first.
Really? The GDP of the Scandinavian countries has taken a nosedive since they joined the EU? For one thing Norway isn't even an EU member and Norway's GDP growth seems to have gone back to the pre-2000 rate. Not that Norway is a typical case study of a no-EU member since their GDP is powered by Oil, a fact which has still not prevented Norway from being a poster boy for how to have a booming economy outside the EU (after all every European country is floating on an ocean of Oil right?). The GDP of Denmark has been on a general climbing trend since they joined what later became the EU in 1973. It has flatlined since the 2008 credit crisis but that crisis was predominantly an American invention. Sweden's GDP climbed after joining the EU in 1995 and is still climbing after the 2008 crisis. If we also count Finland as a Scandinavinan country which it technically is not Finland's GDP has also flatlined since 2008 but it climbed steadily after the country joined the EU 1n 1995. Economic stagnation in EU countries has a lot of causes including the Euro crisis but the ineptitude of eurocrats is not the only cause of stagnation in these countries the ineptitude and stupidity of local politicians also has a lot to do with it as well as the ineptitude of politicians, bankers and business people across the water which caused the 2008 crisis in the first place. The EU may be flawed but it is not the root of all evil, ineptitude, corruption and stupidity.